Unintelligible Ramblings About Nothing of Importance

Who will get the gift in the un-malleable hard plastic container that has no meaningful way of being opened other than implements from Black and Decker, what will it be, and how much carnage will be involved in extracting the gift from its impenetrable casing?

This year, we had two winners.

Runner Up: My nephew Tommy, who received a complex* Transformer in the evil plastic coating of doom. He tore the wrapping from his Transformer and immediately ran off to a corner to begin the arduous task of relieving the complex** toy from its containment. He was gone approximately 20 minutes. He came back with the back part removed (how the hell? seriously!), but was now attempting to go after the various twist-ties*** that restrained Optimus Prime. With his teeth. He had the Transformer on the floor and was hunched over it and trying to tear the ties from it in the same manner one would normally find a dog trying to pull a bone from the frozen Earth.

I finally assisted him in removing the ties and pulling the Transformer from his bondage.

Winner: Me! Santa Claus was benevolent this year and brought me a new battery charger with AA batteries for my camera and AAA for my mp3 player. The whole shooting match was encased in the horrible hard plastic.

Now, I will give Energizer some credit here. They DID see fit to construct this plastic casing with a small escape hatch in the form of a plastic tab that one could forcefully pull on so the plastic would tear down a perforated line. On ONE side. The other side, however, was subject to whatever mechanical forces the user was able to employ. The perforated side tore fairly easily**** but I was still unable to get the charger and batteries from the casing. I then began to tug and pull at the non-perforated side.

This is when tragedy struck, as it invariably does when dealing with such material. At first, there is sheer joy and exuberance that you’ve managed to locate a weak spot and you gleefully pull apart the plastic at the breach, hoping against all hope that you’ll be able to just go all the way through with no impediments. The problem is that there is always an impediment. Whether it’s internal or external, something is bound to halt the progress.

It’s the re-start where things to awry. I made it about halfway down the side of the casing when something occurred. I don’t know if something shiny flew in my path, a Christmas ornament reflected in my diet Coke can or what, but the next thing I knew, I was stopped short. Being on a mission as I was, I attempted to re-start. No go. I then changed my hand position in an effort to gain more leverage. The most reasonable place to create the needed leverage placed my hand in an area where the plastic had torn in such a way that the edges of the plastic were now jagged pieces of impending plastic death. I told myself to be careful. I’m not exceptionally good at listening to myself.

The forces at work here were thus: Get stupid package open THIS CENTURY vs. Don’t cut my hand off.

I ultimately prevailed against the hard plastic, but at a cost. There was blood and carnage, but happily, also Band-Aids.*****

I’m now going to try to not do anything for at least two hours to see what that’s all about. Bailey is alternating between Spyro and her obnoxiously loud keyboards (which I have yet to investigate for a headphone jack, but if there isn’t one, I’m going to have to find a new place to live). It’s been determined that I will have to cook at some point today, but I’m going to put that off as long as humanly possible.******

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* Try as I might, I couldn’t make that godforsaken robot with the unusually small green head turn into a car with a sun-roof.

** No, seriously. This thing is HARD, yo! I had it almost looking like a car, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the two front tires lay flat on the ground. How is this thing suitable for young children?? I SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO THIS!! (insert bracing reality check here: the average 6-year-old is leaps and bounds ahead of me in nearly every area of life)

*** Clearly, Transformers are being packaged by the same band of toy terrorists that package Barbies. Have you ever tried to get a Barbie released from her package in under 15 minutes? Between the metallic twist ties, the clear plastic bindings attached to the box by THREAD (seriously, they SEW her head to the BOX!) and the various other restraint devices, I’m convinced that it’s easier to locate an earring back in a field of safety pins than it is to pull a Barbie cleanly from its container before the recipient of said Barbie begins to cry in angst and frustration.

**** It tore easily because I’m very, very strong.

***** It seems that finally, 11 years later, the child has given up her habit of taking every Band-Aid in the house and repairing imaginary wounds on her various stuffed animals.

****** I think I’ll use as my gauge, the unending bloodshed caused by the plastic. Once I stop expelling red blood cells at an alarming rate from my index finger, I’ll rationalize that production has slowed due to a lack of protein and nutrients in my diet, at which time I may be arsed to weakly crawl to the kitchen and slap together a meal.

WELL. Every blog deserves a first comment, no? Let’s do this thing. List style.

1. Merry Christmas.
2. Glad you retained enough fingers (after your battle with those plastic clamshells) to type!
3. I use WordPress as well and if you like, can help you with what little I know. (What little I do know actually pointed me here!)
4. Merry Christmas!

On December 26, 2007 at 12:17 am Sande said:

I was wondering how you found me, as I haven’t really shouted my presence to the world just yet. I assume it’s because I listed you on my blog roll?

Anyway, I’m dinking around with it, frustrating as that is, but I will certainly hit you up for advice the more I manage to confuse myself.